Nuns Are Funny

How do you solve a problem like religion?How do you handle Nuns and not offend?Just simply have them doing things they wouldn't!Don't follow the norm,Or stay true to form...Pretend!Just show a kookie Nun who rides a scooter:Or show a Sister try to fly a kite.The movies can make folks feelThat all these events are real,

This could be because "nun" is an Inherently Funny Words, or that their outfits look silly. Of course, the majority of modern nuns do not wear habits anymore (preferring plain black or grey dresses instead, maybe including the headdress), but...that's not as funny. Also, the conventional stereotype of them is that they are very stern, severe and disapproving, thus making them either foils for wackiness going on around them or upping the humor value when they dodo something wacky.

IE, nuns are The Comically Serious. The only thing more hilarious than nuns would be Batman in a nun's habit. (You're picturing it right now aren't you? No doubt you're laughing your arse off).

There was a gag in that theatrical short with the Madagascar penguins where the penguins fell in behind a group of nuns to appear inconspicuous.

Sister Act. Everything the nuns do is hilarious, either because of a display of naivete resulting from their sheltered lives, or because it's a mundane thing that you just don't expect a nun to do (dancing to a jukebox), or both.

In Mel Brooks' History Of The World, Part One, the Spanish Inquisition attempts to convert Jews to Catholicism in a torture chamber with a song and dance number. When it doesn't seem to be working, "Send in the nuns!"

Said nuns are dressed... interestingly, to say the least, and are rather impressive in their range. The synchronized-swimming team (of nuns), for example, ...

The Trouble With Angels is a movie about the hilarious antics of two Catholic school girls in a boarding school run by nuns.

Its sequel Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows addresses the trope when Sister George says she doesn't want to be patronized as a "darling little nun" who's "just like a real person." While both movies draw humor from nuns doing things in their bulky habits, the second one ends with the sisters changing to a modified version.

The obscure film Greaser's Palace has a nun played by a man by no reason.

Even better is their treatment of Girls Town, a 1950s movie about a reform school run by nuns, which is about an hour and a half straight of this trope. Such as when the sisters break up a fight: "Paul Anka's beefy security nuns step in!" Although actually, the movie itself contains a few examples of the trope to start with, such as the nun who gleefully advocates severe asskickings for delinquents.

Running Scared - Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines play cops who arrest a priest and a nun who they think are smuggling drugs from Columbia. After they find out they aren't, the nun hits one of them with a ruler.

The Princess Diaries: Bystander calling the police on a cell phone? Whatever. Nun calling the police on a cell phone, getting put on hold, and letting out an exasperated "Oh for the love of God"? Hilarity Ensues!

Short Circuit: "What if it goes and melts down a busload of nuns? How would you like to write the headline on that?" "'Nun Soup'?"

The Le Gendarme series of French films had several eccentric nuns on motorcycles aiding the eponymous policeman.

The British film Nuns on the Run cranks the zany up to 11 by having two men crossdress as nuns to escape criminals.

In the original version of Bedazzled, The Devil tricks Stanley into using his final wish to be transformed into a nun.

Airplane! has a gag where a nun is seeing reading the magazine "Boy's Life", followed immediately by a boy reading "Nun's Life", with a cover featuring a nun riding a surfboard.

By which is meant, Abby is the only member of the team who isn't a member of the cloth. It's not the team name. They're actual nuns.

On Pushing Daisies, Olive spends a short time in a convent during the second season, where the habits are vibrant turquoise with frills around the faces. There's one episode where the gang has to solve the murder of a nun. Hilarity Ensues when the nun tries to run away after being brought back to life.

Ned: Nun on the run, nun on the run!

The Suite Life of Zack and Cody has London and Mady go to a Catholic School. The nuns there always wear their hats, even when hiking through the woods in tracksuit or coaching the volleyball team.

The nuns who show up in the first-season House episode "Damned If You Do" are treated as sympathetic but very quirky characters, and end up producing some pretty funny moments (like when we catch them watching wide-eyed a hunky-looking surfer on the hospital room TV, and hurriedly explain to the team that they were just looking for the remote that controlled the bed...).

Hello Cheeky had a skit about nuns being brought into football crowds to curb hooliganism. Cue the news that 162 nuns have been arrested for assault and disturbing the peace.

Police Officer: ...and so, I retrieved the nun's teeth from the referee's ankle and returned them to the nun in question.Judge: What question?Officer: What fun can a monk have?Judge: I don't know, what fun can a monk have?Officer:Nun.

Call the Midwife - A lot of the comedy comes from their interactions, and how they don't match up to the stereotype of nuns.

Part of the humor in The Sound of Music is Maria's antics compared to the other nuns when she's in the convent, and then Maria's complete Fish Out of Water reaction to "normal" life in the Von Trapp household.